Epidaurus Theater

Continuing with the photos from the 1973 family vacation to Greece, here's the famous Epidaurus Theater. Again, it's an amazing thing - built so long ago, it holds 15,000 people and the acoustics are so perfect that anybody in the audience can hear words spoken from the stage.

Visit Sunday Scans for more scanned stuff - photos, artwork, cards, and more.

Lions Gate Bridge II

A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver. I took the opportunity to walk out on the bridge and get some photos of the large towers, and here they are. Don't get dizzy looking up!

This post is for both the Scenic Sunday and Sunday Bridges memes, as I think it qualifies for both.

Huge Rainbow

I originally had something else planned for this week's Skywatch Friday post, but last night we had a storm pass over just before sunset. Just occasionally, when the conditions are right, this can make for fantastic rainbows. This one started as just a small double section.

But it soon spread out to form a semicircle, across much of the southeastern sky.

And even had sections with a second rainbow, as shown in the left of this photo.

So I've postponed the entry I had ready, and put these photos up instead!

Cosmopolitan

One of the newer hotel/casinos in Las Vegas is the Cosmopolitan, aimed at the high end. It's a beautiful pair of buildings from the outside.

And of course, inside, it's simply gorgeous. These hanging glass curtains particularly impressed me.

I didn't spend any money here, it's a little out of my comfort zone! But it was a brief part of My World! And it's also for PicStory, with the theme of the week being Blue.

Erechtheion Caryatids (Greece)

First, my thoughts are with Norway after yesterday's terrible events. I can only hope that this doesn't affect the country's wonderful and unique way of life.

For this week's Sunday Scans entry, here's an old photo of the famous Erechtheion caryatids, at the Acropolis in Athens. It's amazing to think that these were made 2,400 years ago!

I was asked last week if these old photos are sepia-toned; in fact they're simply old color prints that have faded. One of these days I may see if I can figure out how to bring the color back to them, as I know it's possible to change the color curves with photo editing software. But my time for that tends to be very limited.

Desert Views

In my last post, I showed a couple of desert photos in Utah just before sunset. If you simply turned around from where I took the second one, here's what you saw. Bear in mind that the road you see is one of America's major highways, Interstate 70, which runs for thousands of miles. These photos were taken literally yards off the highway.

In literally two minutes, the light was gone. This remains one of my favorite parts of the 12-hour drive from my town to Las Vegas. And that's my Scenic Sunday entry for the week. And I'm also entering it into the fun PicStory meme, under the theme "Interstate Travel".

Desert Skies

Back in early May when we were driving back from Las Vegas, we hit one of my favorite parts of the drive just before sunset, in the Utah desert where the views can be expansive as the highway approaches a break in the cliffs and drops down.

It's not uncommon to see clouds where the rain doesn't get to the ground, known as virga (this is also common where I live). Right at sunset this can create some wonderful effects.

In my next post on Friday I'll show you the very nice views when you turn around from where this last photo was taken. Until then, visit Skywatch Friday for more incredible skies.

For those interested in weather (an appropriate Skywatch topic), here's an illustration of the dramatic shifts from winter to summer here. At my house, our low temperature this year has been -19.5 °F (-28.6 °C) back in February. We've been as high as 91.2 °F (32.9 °C) this month. That's a shift of over 110 °F, or 61.5 °C!